


Why Byleth Chose Edelgard over Rhea

by Hemerodromus



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-17
Updated: 2021-01-17
Packaged: 2021-03-15 18:00:19
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 539
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28817460
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hemerodromus/pseuds/Hemerodromus
Summary: A brief discourse on Byleth's time at the academy, and the problem with trying to keep secrets from a time traveller.
Kudos: 13





	Why Byleth Chose Edelgard over Rhea

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ShadefortheSoul](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShadefortheSoul/gifts).



In the depths of the Garreg Mach Monastery, Archbishop Rhea had concealed many terrible secrets over the years. After coming to work in the mountain-top fortress, Byleth had come to know some of them intimately. The thing about being capable of frequent, casual time travel, is that it made her progressively more cavalier with regards to silly things like “boundaries”, be they legal, social, or moral. Since Rhea was the absolute authority on all those boundaries in the Monastery, Byleth got to experience the Archbishop’s approach to crime and punishment many, many times. Turns out? Rhea’s only really nice until she goes over the edge of her patience. Then, the secret dungeons, midnight kidnappings, torture, and executions come out from behind her faintly smiling façade.

Sothis, her constant companion in these endless loops of unending horrifying revelations, mostly just became more and more confused as to how Rhea had not already been deposed by this point, given the sheer quantity and variety of skeletons in her closet, or, more accurately, built into the walls, floors, and roof of the buildings she owned. It was really on a scale that boggled the mind for the pair living in Byleth’s time travelling body, and they agreed, sometime in the third month, that they should probably start working out how to assassinate Rhea at some point shortly after the current class graduates. It would not do to cause that level of chaos while so many important heirs and heiresses were in the firing line, but once most people were gone, maybe Rhea could quietly “pass in her sleep.” Sadly, all they managed to discover before the war began is that Rhea is very, very paranoid, and very, very creative when it comes to punishing attempted murder.

Byleth spent the almost as much of that year at Garreg Mach before the war began discovering ever more horrifying secret dungeons and burial grounds within the bowels of the Monastery as she spent teaching the Black Eagles. So many, in fact, that by the end, when she finally realized _exactly_ how long Rhea had been running the place, she calculated that the good Archbishop must have created a new prison, bricked up mass grave, or illicit cache of magical weaponry every decade for the last millennium. Of course, Byleth got to find most of these by being dragged there, either to be executed or tortured. It really soured her towards Rhea as a person by the time Edelgard decided to declare war on, as far as Byleth could tell, the entire continent. The decision to help the newly crowned empress uproot the society that the green-haired, immortal tyrant had founded seemed only fair, given that the worst Edelgard could accomplish was a few decades of torture and bloodshed before she keeled over like a normal mortal ruler, whereas Rhea, well…her track record of religious persecution, violent military action, and murder would not stop until someone killed her.

The discovery, amidst the invasion of Garreg Mach, that Rhea could, additionally turn into a giant dragon in a pinch only cemented this decision. Byleth had made a career, before being dragged into this teaching gig, of killing monsters.

Rhea was just the biggest one so far.

**Author's Note:**

> My partner, ShadefortheSoul, likes to write FE: Three Houses one shots, and I thought I might as well contribute one as well. Not long or anything, just some thoughts on why Byleth might side with little miss fascist over the dragon pope.


End file.
